I seem to have failed to make any Cosmic Latte strips this week. I need to train myself to do bits of them at a time rather than all at once. I did get a lot of writing done though, because writing is something I can do in little bits at a time. I want to see if I can manage two books a year. Pirate Space took me much longer than half a year, but Pirate Space was written with very little planning or common sense and most of the time I was working on it I was fixing it.

I couldn’t be bothered waiting for another copy of the book to arrive before I approved it so I’ve made it available online already. It’s here. No one’s going to buy it in the ten days it takes for another copy of the book to arrive anyway, and I think the only thing I’d need to change is the colour of the cover. I chose the price by calculating the average cost for a book this size and then making it slightly cheaper. I put Douglas Adams and Robert Rankin in the description because I think the only way people are going to find the book at the moment is by putting their favourite authors in the search engine to see what comes up. I didn’t put Pratchett or Fforde in because I don’t think I can say their writing has affected me in any way. If I were really trying to sell the book I’d put their names in anyway, but I have my pride.

And apparently I have 30 days to send two copies of the book to the ‘National Librarian’ after the date of publication. Except I set the date of publication as 10/01/08 because that’s when I first sent myself a copy, so that gives me… ten days. Which is impossible.

I’ll have to send them an email asking if that’s going to be a problem. I’ll also ask what sort of changes I can make to the book and still keep the same ISBN number. Apparently there’s still a spelling error lurking in it somewhere, but I’m not sure if it will count as a ‘later edition’ if I correct it and re-upload it to Lulu. Also if I added a barcode – is that a later edition?

Hmm. I could make the book available on Lulu right now if I wanted. Spooky. But I really want to make sure it still prints out to my satisfaction after the changes I’ve made.

More of the cover of my book. I wasn’t sure about having anything written on the back since people won’t see the back until they’ve bought it anyway, but someone at work pointed out that if anyone wants to borrow it off a friend they’ll want to read the back of the book first.

I won’t bother putting a barcode on it since it’ll never be in shops anyway. And barcodes are ugly. I applied for an ISBN yesterday but until I get one I’ve put the word ‘yourface’ where the ISBN will go.

Writing those three paragraphs on the back of the cover were dern difficult. I’m not good at writing when it seems a bit like a homework assignment. The last paragraph was the most difficult. I had to fit it in that little gap.

I’ve seen eight episodes of the original Star Trek now. I swear that if it wasn’t for Captain Kirk’s raw sexual magnetism causing every human woman, alien woman and android woman in the galaxy to fall in love with him, the crew of the Enterprise wouldn’t survive for more than a day.

Also, in the 1960s you didn’t need an excuse for having a replica Earth from the 1960s in the future. If you bunged one in there at the far reaches of the galaxy, you didn’t need to explain it at all. It’s just there – deal with it.

I’ve just put up a very basic Cosmic Latte archive. The archive will probably look exactly like that once I’ve finished with it, but the links will go to proper pages with ‘first’ and ‘last’ and ‘next’ and ‘latest’ and ‘home’ and ‘archive’ links underneath the cartoons, rather than just the gifs themselves. I’ll still post the comic here first, of course.

My book arrived! It looks exactly as I designed it! They didn’t replace the font because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing!

I’ll have to do something to the cover. Make it more professional. I think I’ll frame the pirate flag wih some bars at the top and the bottom. I want it to look like a book that hasn’t been self-published.